"Less money into books -> less books" seems like "demand goes down -> supply goes down" and fits my unsophisticated understanding of economics. It's not necessarily clear that reduced copyright -> less money into books.
Authors have managed to produce novels while holding down demanding full time jobs (or in at least one bestsellers case, still in full time education) at the same time. It is not necessarily the case that the only way books get made is full time writing.
You could also argue that the reduction in books from reduced copyright would be balanced by an increase in currently unwriteable "remixes" of existing works. Copyright could be, for example, the only thing holding back an explosion of people making enough to live on publishing fan-fiction. Who speaks for them?
There's still scope for a sweeping reduction, in the States at least. Reducing the duration from "Year of Authors death + 70 years" down to, just "Authors death", for example, clearly couldn't lead to any given author producing fewer books.
I absolutely agree that if there is a forum on the scope and duration of IP, small-money authors should be represented. It doesn't seem like that will be happening any time soon though.
One minor nitpick: "Reducing the duration from "Year of Authors death + 70 years" down to, just "Authors death", for example, clearly couldn't lead to any given author producing fewer books."
You can't know that. Lots of make money specifically to leave to children, and for many others it plays a significant role.
I agree about all the other points - there is a lot of unknown in this field. I'm just not crazy about people saying "let's scrap this at least partially working system, and replace it with something I just made up". I'm especially not crazy if they don't even demonstrate a basic understanding of the issues.
This is precisely the argument I had with a musician friend of mine: he was arguing that he wanted to leave an income to his kids in the form of his catalogue. My argument was that it was his responsibility to convert the catalogue into cash during his lifetime, so that he didn't have to rely on the current copyright scheme being enforced in perpetuity. He could then leave that cash to them as part of his estate in the usual fashion.
He was slightly more swayed by the moral argument: his children had done no work for this income, so why should they be preferred over the rest of society in benefiting from his creative output?
You're too kind, missing the drive to provide for the next generation is more than a minor nit.
A tempting response is "So something like min(20years, authors remaining lifespan)" but that could leave early work (often less commercially successful) with an expectation of a longer copyright duration than later work.
A fixed period risks letting copyright lapse in an authors lifetime, which is certainly offputting to anyone who, for example, dislikes fan-fiction. So we move towards "authors remaining lifespan + rough average lifespan" as a compromise.
Seems reasonable, although I find one way to increase my understanding of any issue is exactly this kind of discussion.
Authors have managed to produce novels while holding down demanding full time jobs (or in at least one bestsellers case, still in full time education) at the same time. It is not necessarily the case that the only way books get made is full time writing.
You could also argue that the reduction in books from reduced copyright would be balanced by an increase in currently unwriteable "remixes" of existing works. Copyright could be, for example, the only thing holding back an explosion of people making enough to live on publishing fan-fiction. Who speaks for them?
There's still scope for a sweeping reduction, in the States at least. Reducing the duration from "Year of Authors death + 70 years" down to, just "Authors death", for example, clearly couldn't lead to any given author producing fewer books.
I absolutely agree that if there is a forum on the scope and duration of IP, small-money authors should be represented. It doesn't seem like that will be happening any time soon though.